


if it looks like you and snarls like you

by faedemon



Series: faedemon's Phic Phight 2020 [5]
Category: Danny Phantom
Genre: Denial, Dreams vs. Reality, Gen, Lichtenberg Scars, POV Danny Fenton, Phic phight 2020, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, Unreliable Narrator, portal accident
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-09
Updated: 2020-04-09
Packaged: 2021-03-01 21:40:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 577
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23563942
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/faedemon/pseuds/faedemon
Summary: There is a ghost living in Danny's mirror, and it is not him, no matter how it wears his face, or bears the same crawling scars.
Series: faedemon's Phic Phight 2020 [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1685395
Comments: 22
Kudos: 94
Collections: Phic Phight!





	if it looks like you and snarls like you

**Author's Note:**

  * For [astridianmayfly](https://archiveofourown.org/users/astridianmayfly/gifts).



> Written for the Phic Phight 2020! This one's prompt comes from [astridianmayfly](https://archiveofourown.org/users/astridianmayfly), who can also be found under that username on Tumblr and FFN. Prompt is as follows:
> 
> "There is a ghost living in Danny's mirror."
> 
> Also, this story is cross-posted on FFN under the username faedemonn. It can be found [here](https://www.fanfiction.net/s/13575646/1/if-it-looks-like-you-and-snarls-like-you).

There is a ghost living in Danny’s mirror.

Or, there is a ghost living in his reflection. It’s hard to tell, really. He doesn’t look at any reflective surface when he’s not at home, if he can help it. It’s easier to believe it’s the mirror, a single, faulty pane of glass in a building haunted with all the old remnants of things his parents have dredged up. It’s one of those old ghosts, distorting his reflection. There is a ghost living in Danny’s mirror, and it is not him.

He goes home after school one day with a note from the office. He’s no longer allowed to handle glassware; he’d dropped the beakers in Chemistry one too many times. That’s fine. He’s always been a clumsy kid; his hands must just be really sweaty, lately. If his hands are always cold and dry when he goes to wipe them on his jeans, that’s coincidence, is all.

That sensation you get when you’re just about to fall asleep, but jerk awake, having felt like you were falling? Danny gets it a lot, nowadays. But it always seems to come when he wakes up in the morning, and the bedsprings squeal when he bounces on his mattress. Odd, but not too odd. He probably just jerks a little harder than most people.

His parents’ heating bill has gone up. Their utilities are always high—the lab demands a lot of energy—but usually the house is pretty warm, just from all the machinery running. No match for climate change causing an unseasonable chill, though. The cold is always determined to penetrate the house.

Danny’s depth perception has been off, lately. He keeps reaching out to lean on tables or on the wall and missing, somehow, like his hand had gone right through it. He’s considered asking his parents for glasses, but Tucker’s gotten an extra beating from Dash one too many times on account of looking ‘too nerdy.’ Contacts sound like a pain, anyway. He’ll deal.

He’s been having nightmares. Not the slasher, running-for-your-life kind, but the eerie sort of scary. He’ll wake up in his room, alone, late at night, and wherever he looks will glow green. He’ll get out of bed feeling lighter than he should, like at any moment he might float away. He’ll walk from his room down the hall to the bathroom, barely leaving footprints in the plush carpet, and he won’t have to flick on the bathroom light. He’ll be able to see just fine, even in the pitch-black night, everything still lit with that off, green glow. And he’ll look in the mirror, and there will be a ghost there.

The ghost is not him, but it wears his face. Its eyes are green and its hair is white and up its neck crawls bright white Lichtenberg scars, and he’ll snarl at the mirror, angry at it for mocking the electrocution that had left him hospitalized for three days. And it will snarl back, and when he wakes in the morning, he will not recall if there was any moment between his snarl and its.

There is a ghost living in Danny’s mirror in the daytime, too. He sees himself in his reflection, but the echo of that mocking phantom hides behind his eyes, in the roots of his hair. He sees both himself and it there, and he takes to avoiding mirrors.

He takes to avoiding other people’s gazes, too.

**Author's Note:**

> hope yall liked this one! if you did, please leave a comment, and be sure to show the other phic phighters of this year some love. :>


End file.
